Scoop devices, commonly known as dishers, are used for serving predetermined portions of a product. Dishers are well known in the prior art and are often used in food service environments where the server wishes to serve consistent predetermined portions of a food product. For instance, employees in a cafeteria may use dishers to serve consistent helpings of a food such as mashed potatoes.
A typical prior art disher includes a bowl or scoop affixed to a mounting boss. A stem is generally affixed to this boss and includes a threaded end located distally from the scoop onto which a handle is attached. A thin, metal sweep is pivotally mounted in the bowl and attached to a shaft which is rotated by a spring loaded thumb rack moved transversely to the handle. The rotating shaft is typically supported by a metal tab depending from the stem and having an aperture through which an end of the shaft extends. This tab is often captively held between the handle and a flange on the stem when the handle is turned onto the threaded end. The thumb rack is pivotably mounted on a pin which is affixed to the stem. All of the various inter-part attachment points of prior art dishers establish crevices and gaps in which the product being served or other matter collects. This collected product is difficult to wash away and usually remains trapped from one use to the next. If the product is a food product, bacteria and other microorganisms propagate throughout the crevices and gaps making the disher unsanitary for future use.
Dishers are commonly used in the commercial food service industry so that they are often used daily in the service of food. This fact makes it all the more important that dishers be substantially free from the cracks and crevices in which food or soil can collect and microorganisms can develop. The NSF International (NSF) has established guidelines to which dishers must adhere before they are stamped as NSF Certified.
NSF is concerned that there be a minimum of food or soil collection points, particularly in the areas closest to the bowl considered the food zone area. Some manufacturers of prior art dishers fill the cracks and crevices present in inter-part joint areas with epoxy or other types of fillers to eliminate soil collection points in order to gain NSF approval. However, some fillers, such as epoxies, are brittle and break off or begin to flake away as the disher is repeatedly used. Thus, although the disher may have obtained NSF approval when manufactured, unsanitary conditions may develop over time.
It would be advantageous to have a serving device in which many of these unsanitary product collection points were eliminated. In particular, it would be advantageous to eliminate not only the collection points close to the bowl but also the collection
From a manufacturer's viewpoint, NSF certification is important not only for sanitary reasons but also for marketing reasons. Many commercial buyers require that the dishers they purchase meet or exceed the NSF standards. Consequently, the NSF standards play an important role in the design of dishers making it extremely desirable to minimize unsanitary collection points.
NSF standards also require that the various components of a disher be removable for cleaning without requiring the use of tools. Typically, in disassembling prior art dishers, the handle is unscrewed from the stem allowing the tab which supports the shaft to be removed. The sweep can then be snapped loose from the bowl and removed as a unit with the shaft. After the shaft is removed, the thumb rack and spring are easily removed. Over time, this prior art arrangement can present problems since the tab supporting the shaft is not affixed to the stem. When the disher is reassembled the aperture in the tab is not always properly aligned. This can, in turn, misalign the shaft with respect to the bowl leading to binding, difficulty in movement of the thumb rack, and excessive wear on the various components. The problem is accentuated as the components are repeatedly disassembled and reassembled for various cleanings. The fit of the tab between the stem and the handle becomes looser and less accurately alignable with the gradual wear incurred from the repeated disassemblies and reassemblies. It would be advantageous to have a disher with a rigidly affixed tab to which the shaft could be mounted so that alignment problems would not develop over the useful life of the disher while still allowing easy disassembly of the components.
Dishers are preferably color-coded according to bowl size. There are nine standard sizes of bowls used by the industry and each bowl is matched with a single industry standard color. Typically, the handle or a portion of the handle includes this color so that a user may quickly and easily know the bowl size. When the dishers are used for commercial food service, it is important that the proper bowl size is used so that accurate predetermined portions of the product may be served. This ensures the desired level of profitability per helping served.
Problems occur with removable handles during disassembly and reassembly of the dishers for cleaning or servicing since the color-coded handles may be attached to different stems than the ones from which they were removed. In this event, the color-coded handle no longer properly designates the size of the bowl being used Mixing the handles and bowls leads to the service of inaccurate portions of product, and possibly leads to lower profitability. It would be advantageous to have a unitary handle presenting a substantially smooth exterior which could not be removed from the bowl so that a user can be assured that the color-coding on the handle accurately indicates the bowl size. Additionally, it would be advantageous to have a color-coded handle which extended into proximity with the bowl so that even while the disher was being handled by a user, a supervisor could easily determine from a distance, by the exposed color, whether the user serving the product was using the appropriately sized bowl.
An example of a prior art disher is the Crestware 18-8 Stainless Steel Ice Cream Disher manufactured by Crest Manufacturing Inc. This disher has a boss attached to a bowl, a stem attached to the boss of a proximate end, and a handle which is screwed onto the distal end of the stem, thereby pinching a shaft support tab between the stem and handle. A thumb rack support piece is stamped in the tab and helps support the thumb rack as it is moved transversely to the handle to operate the shaft and move the sweep within the bowl. All of these extensions and inter-part attachment loci provide potential areas for product accumulation which, in the case of food, can create unsanitary conditions. In this prior art disher, the joints in proximity to the bowl are coated with a filler material. However, as discussed above, many filler materials, such as epoxy, can chip away, facilitating unsanitary food and soil collection.
Nothing in the prior art suggests the use of a unitary, non-removable handle assembly which eliminates unsanitary product collection regions and prevents improperly matching removable color-coded handles with bowls of predetermined sizes.